Palestinians in Gaza were fleeing their homes and carrying their dead and wounded to hospitals as Israel resumed its bombing of the besieged enclave.
Fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed Friday after a week-long truce expired. An agreement on extending the break in fighting was not reached before the 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) deadline.
The agreement, which began on November 24 and was extended twice, caused a pause in fighting and allowed an increase in aid flows to Gaza, while dozens of Israelis taken prisoner on October 7 were were exchanged for hundreds of imprisoned Palestinians.
However, hostilities resumed immediately after the expiration of the final deadline.
Smoke rose over the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis following the Israeli strikes, killing people in both places.
In Khan Younis, a group of men chanted “God is greatest” as they rushed through the streets carrying a body wrapped in a white shroud.
“War on Children”
At the hospital reception, Lina Hamdan, 10, said: “We were getting ready to sleep when I heard a bomb. My brothers started screaming.
In Rafah, a young man rushed a seriously injured child out of a refugee camp hit by an explosion, while others could be seen pulling a motionless person from the rubble.
Marwan al-Hams, director of al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, where many Palestinians fled after being ordered by Israel to leave the north of the territory, said the strikes killed at least nine people in the city, including four children.
In the northern Gaza Strip, the fireball from a large explosion could be seen across the border in the Israeli town of Sderot.
Speaking from a Gaza hospital, UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Friday that a bomb had landed “literally 50 meters away.”
“I can’t overstate how much hospital capacity has been reduced,” he said. “We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones. »
“It’s a war on children,” he added.